podficmeta | From Roga

Wow. This actually hadn't occurred to me before, but I know that I've made minor edits as I've read my own stuff. Mostly it's been for the sake of clarity--replacing a pronoun with a name, tweaking word order, breaking up sentences, etc. As a writer, I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a reader making silent edits of that nature. I'd maybe want a note in the metadata if the edits were in the line of removing or extensively re-working more than a few sentences or a paragraph or two, but I personally wouldn't require permission from the reader (and now I have to go edit my permission statement again ;)).

As a listener, I think I'd prefer changes to be noted at the beginning or in the metadata, not in the actual reading. That said, I can also think of circumstances where audio cues during the story might be helpful, but not outright asides if that makes any sense.

And, yeah, I'd like to know if any major re-writing or re-working was done because otherwise I'd go nuts waiting for favorite parts of the story to happen and be jarred if they happened out of order or not at all.

This is a very interesting topic. Yay, roga!

When I read I stray from the text a very slight amount sometimes, along the lines of turning two words into a contraction in dialogue, if that sounds more natural. Or correcting something if it a clear typo.

Anything beyond that, and I won't make a change without explicit author permission. The piece I am working on right now has the word "tortuous" in a place that I was pretty sure the author meant "torturous." I recorded tortuous because that's what the text said, but I felt uneasy about it. Then I realized the author is a friend of mine, and I could just ask her to clarify. She said that yeah, she *had* meant torturous, and then I was comfortable going in and fixing it. But I wouldn't have fixed it if I couldn't ask first, I don't think. I would err on the side of sticking to the text.

If a person were uncomfortable with reading a scene and wanted to go to the author to request a revised version for reading aloud, that would seem reasonable to me, I guess. Although if it's because of content or length, I'd kind of feel like the reader should just choose a different story. The adding dialogue tags thing is a more understandable reason to ask for rewrites, although I would be more impressed with the reader if they just took it as a challenge to really work at making the different speakers in the scene distinguishable.

So I guess my overall verdict is that asking for rewrites is reasonable as a course of action, but it seems even better to choose a story in the first place that you don't need rewrites for, and to take the parts that you're unsure of as challenges, rather than trying to get them changed.

Hi! :) I posted a comment below explaining why I brought up sex scenes, so I won't repeat it here, but. Your words are wise, and I agree that for anything other than minimal typos, one should get author permission, just to be on the safe side. As long as the author is credited with writing the fic, it should be their words that are being read.

I don't think adaptation for reading is a bad thing; I think it can create opportunities for more fics of different kinds to be podficced, and yes, it requires more effort, but it might yield great results. And maybe if there were a culture of making these small kinds of adaptations, it would just feel more acceptable to ask an author for permission to do that.

I seem to be developing a pattern of listening to podfics that I've never read, and reading fics that I probably won't listen to. So as a reader/listener, I'm not sure text changes would ever make a difference to me.

I've undertaken more than one podfic as a recorder that turned out to be really hard to podfic for some of the reasons you mention. In one case I just found something more straightforward to record. In another, I soldiered through, hoping the narrative structure would work. I don't think I'd be inclined to do any significant re-writing or re-structuring of someone else's work.

As a writer, I'd prefer to be asked about textual changes, but I understand podfic as a transformative work, essentially out of my hands.

I think I already answered in the original post (sorry Zvi, I didn't realize this was only the collection post :), but I'll post here again as well. I think minimal changes should be expected in terms of silently correcting typos or contracting in dialog.

But what Roga was talking about really unsettles me a bit. They mostly described it in terms of taking out NC17 material, and i find that very problematic. If the story is good, the sex scenes ought to be central to the story and "cleaning it up" is an incisive move. If someone doesn't want to read sex scenes (and that's understandable), they might look at the vast array of non-NC17 stories.

The issue that i find more problematic for myself is language I disapprove of. So far, I think i've just avoided reading such stories out loud. But if there's ablist or misogynist or racist or homophobic language...I'm not sure I'd want to read it and i'm not sure I'd feel comfortable changing it. So I've avoided the issue at least so far.

Except that the position that every scene should contribute to the telling of a story is an aesthetic judgement, and one I agree with, but it's not a universal aesthetic value. And podfic is definitely not restricted to stories which I find aesthetically pleasing, or are formulated within the aesthetic frameworks I find relevant. (Also, there's nothing stopping someone from recording a story which is formulated according to my aesthetic standards, but badly. I mean, people make kitschy things on purpose sometimes.)

So, what if it's a story where it's clear that the sex scene was just written because "you've got to have pr0n or no one will read your fic"?

Of course :)

I still think there's an integrity of the text that i'm uncomfortable letting a reader change.

I may be kneejerking because the examples were about sex but OMG. Are we gonna bleep next?

If I like the story, I read the story. But I don't pick and choose which parts to read or not read. It's a Gesamtkunstwerk :)

I'm kinda equally respond to readerly addition of ratings etc. I'm fascinated with the fact that certain things can come across STRONGER in audio. Having a noncon scene spoken in your ear may be much more intense than reading and being able to skim it. I still would feel very uncomfortable in adding ratings or warnings if they aren't there. I guess one could have ADDITIONAL reader warnings. But...there's creative interpretation and evaluation. And adding a rape warning, for example, might5 be more the latter than the former. [I'm willing to be convinced otherwise on this one, however :) The editing the text to getting rid of the pr0n? Not so much so!]

I may be kneejerking because the examples were about sex but OMG. Are we gonna bleep next?

That's not what I was getting at, and I don't think it's a case of a slippery slope of censorship or anything at all. I just posted a comment here that explains where I was coming from in bringing it up, and why I was interested in seeing it discussed.

Thanks for the longer explanation, but I'm not sure I am seeing a real difference between what you are describing and what censorship effectively is. You want to edit out parts that the author clearly found important enough to include in their published version. That to me is censoring (or, when asking the author to do it, maybe self-censoring?).

Now, if you want to ask the author to write a PG13 version of their story because that's what you want to read/hear, then it's up to them, clearly. But except in those cases where the pr0n is added on (and I know there are writers who offer different versions, so I know that for some people the sex really is not an intricate element of the narrative and characterization but sexy lagniappe), I'm not sure writers would want to do that to their story (or have it done to them).

I wonder if you could make an analogy to translation, where someone else authors a new version of the text and yet...I've gotta check with the fanfic translators I know if they delete sections or tone down things...that might be a useful analogy?

First of all, yes, it would be self-censoring; I'd never even suggest doing it without the author's permission/approval.

I'm not sure writers would want to do that to their story (or have it done to them).

Definitely; again, author permission is necessary.

I'm not sure translation is the right analogy; it requires adaptation of a different kind, where it's still written word to written word. The difference in medium here matters, I think.

To be honest, though, the entire point is moot if it's just me who feels this way about podfic sex scenes. If the majority have no problem with it -- reading or writing -- then there's no reason to make such an adaptation anyway. Part of the reason I brought it up was also to see if there were others who felt the same way. I mean, I know that some do because I've talked to them, I just have no idea whether it's at all widespread.

And obviously, even if it is, that's not reason enough to change it; the reader has to want it too, and the author has to be okay with it. But I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that in some circumstances, all of those things would come together.

I just want to step in here and say no, you're not the only one. It's a matter of personal taste, of course; but if a reader really, really wants to podfic something and feels uncomfortable with a few scenes, it's perfectly acceptable for them to ask the author about changing it.

I think the term we're looking for here is Bowdlerisation.

Cath, I really strongly agree with the bit about being unsettled by taking sex scenes out. And I also agree with your reason for it, that the sex scene is often an important part of the plot, the character journey, or the emotional arc of the fic. Or all three. The idea that it is so low in value that it can just be taken out without harming the fic makes me kind of instinctively defensive. There's this whole implication that the sex is just there for titillation and not actually meaningful. And I am not saying that a person who wants to take a sex scene out of a fic would mean any of those things. But my gut reaction is to see it that way. I just... can't they find a gen fic, and leave the NC-17 stories intact for those of us who enjoy reading and hearing them that way? Because the act of taking a sex scene out seems really different than the act of just not choosing to write or record one in the first place.

The language you disapprove of thing is more interesting. I think I agree about taking it out. My friend was telling me the other day about how, in this long fic she's reading, she found this line that was casually misogynistic. So casually thrown in there that she didn't notice. Here, I'll find the lines she quoted me.

"I’d probably get my head bitten off if I asked for champagne in the dressing room. I asked [female character] if she could get me a Coke Zero the other day; she handed me a Pepsi and told me to go fuck myself."

[Male character 1] laughs. “My sweet little [female character],” he says in a saccharine voice.

"No seriously. That time of the month or something, man, I don't know."

"PMS,” [Male character 1] says. “That's what you get for working with women."

What do you do when you are reading along, in a fic you've already committed to doing and have already put hours and hours of work into, and you come across something like that? If it were by an author I felt comfortable talking with, I'd definitely ask them to alter it in some way to either remove the problem or acknowledge it as problematic. In this case, she doesn't know the author well enough to do that, so she just read it but felt very uncomfortable with it.

Yes, you articulated my concerns much more clearly than I could. Thank you!!! And Zvi's right, of course, that some writers do add the sex scenes on, but I don't want to be the judge of that...

Re the other issue. I've only so far recorded fic by people i knew personally or felt comfortable asking. And I think I'd have emailed them if I came across sth that really bugged me (in fact, i just read a story where i thought there was a continuity error, and i almost emailed but Allison and I went back&forth and I decided it was ambivalent enough to leave).

So that scene. Yeah, that's a hard one! Because now it's your voice SAYING these things!!!

My biggest fear is the in character attempts. I'm just waiting for the first Jerk/Bitch or Douchebag in J2 or SPN that I come across... Maybe i'm lucky I'm not in Life on Mars fandom??? :)

And Zvi's right, of course, that some writers do add the sex scenes on, but I don't want to be the judge of that...

That's absolutely true, and I feel that way about some fics that I have read, that the sex scene has no purpose and makes the overall story weaker. And if I were the beta-reader for that fic, I would certainly say so.

But podfic reader is pretty far from beta-reader, and unless it happened to be an author I had both types of relationship with, I would not ask for that kind of change.

I'm just waiting for the first Jerk/Bitch or Douchebag in J2 or SPN that I come across...

In the podfic I'm working on right now, the word faggot is used several times. But it's not tossed off casually, it's used in a very emotionally intense scene and as an expression of hate by a clearly evil character. I wasn't thrilled while recording with having to say that word out loud, but I also didn't feel like its use in the story was gratuitous, and it wasn't a dealbreaker for me the way that, honestly, the "PMS. That's what you get for working with women," scene would probably have been.

So context matters a lot to me when it comes to things like that. I can think of at least one word I would never say, though.

I've actually had this happen to me, as a writer whose work was read by someone else. Not that I was asked for changes, and the changes were slight, so I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but Friendly Misdirection has a couple of word order changes that change the meaning of the sentences they're in, and it's frustrating, for me as an author, to have the story changed. They're not big changes, but it's enough that the story isn't exactly the one I wrote down and published.

That would bug me as hell as an author. It would actually itch like FUCK. And if I was the reader, I'd want to know so I can apologize and possibly edit the podfic, I think.

I, um, hmm. It feels really, really churlish to say, "Oh, you did this cool thing, but because it's not perfect, it's Not Good Enough." And, if it's not intentional, I really don't need an apology. I just ... don't go back and re-listen to the story myself.

Do you really think I should say?

no, I mean, I completely get your hesitation to say anything. It's kinda like concrit, where even half the people who say they want it don't actually want it, so most of us end up erring on the side of caution and not saying anything. I can /guarantee/ that I as a podfic recorder would like to know, but I can sadly not say that you should 100% for sure go and tell this person, so. It's tough.

OOC, did you say anything about it to the reader, or just let it sit?

This is something I've been pondering lately from the reader-side... fretting over mistakes that I might not notice despite beta-ing and multiple listens. (Just the other day, I realized that I'd read a sentence that had the word "boat" in it about TEN times, and *EVERY* time, I'd said the word "ship" without realizing. If I wasn't having so much trouble with the line for other reasons, I might never even have noticed.)

I didn't say anything. I feel like it would be churlish, like if someone knitted socks for you and you said, "Oh, you dropped some stitches." I mean, yes, technically, an error has occurred, but now I have HANDMADE SOCKS. How can I complain?

By the same token, people are just about never moved to make secondary fanwork of my stuff, so I don't feel like I can say anything but "Yay! Go look!" if it's of a minimal standard of quality.

Thread-jumping: When people have read my fic, they send me a copy of the finished reading before posting, for me to listen to. If I know they are working with Audacity (or can otherwise make changes easily), I would mention it at that stage. (And if I miss it or let it go at that stage, then I would consider that my own fault.)

It actually bothers me, as a listener, that I probably would never know there were changes (unless I was reading the story as I listened to it or knew it really well.) And it wouldn't bother me so much if I knew what the differences were or even knew that they existed. I suppose that's just one of the inherent risks of podficcing.

As a listener the idea of getting an abridged version of a story kind of freaks me out, if the reader mentioned it in the podfic post then I would definitely not download. Not every story can work as a podfic, not every story can be right for *you* to read as a podfic. If it isn't then I suggest you give it a miss, let someone else do it or leave it to be appreciated in text form only.

And I 100% believe that permission to record DOES NOT equal permission to adapt.

Oh, great way to phrase it: permission to record DOES NOT equal permission to adapt

Though I might say edit...because I think we do adapt, when we use different voices or use sound manips. But it's the changing of the words (or rather, entire paragraphs) that's the issue, right?

I guess I always think of voices and sound manips as interpretation but yes, change 'adapt' to 'edit' and it's a good representation of how I feel.

But it's the changing of the words (or rather, entire paragraphs) that's the issue, right?

Definitely. Accidentally reading something incorrectly is a lot different from deciding that the sex scene is superfluous or that the flashback will confuse listeners or whatever.

Part of me is just confused by (what seems to me) to be the idea that the story must conform to the *readers* needs and not the other way round.

Right! Like, i'm a big opponent of readers being simply a tool, like a speech software, and i do think of reading as an interpretation and a form of transformative work. But I'm stuck on why I'd want to read a story that i so fundamentally disapprove of parts of (wow, that was awkward grammar :)

THIS. I understand that there are complexities (it's always more complicate etc) but my first reaction to this idea as a podfic artist, a writer and a podfic listener is a huge DO NOT WANT. It freaks me right out.

First of all, yay for everyone talking about this :-) It's really interesting to hear both what people are already doing (which kind of changes you're making while recording), and which kind of adaptations people think might be acceptable.

Personally, I think that other than the kind of obvious typos and maybe the occasional contraction (wanna instead of want to, etc), which the reader can make by themselves, any other change should come with author permission. I do think that there certain changes one can make to a fic to make it better understood when read out loud, like the example of dialogue tags, or Zvi's example of alien languages, and that they should be run by the author. Or really, there are two ways to do this: 1. The author gives the reader blanket permission to make those kinds of changes as the reader sees fit, which could work if the author trusts the reader, or feels less ownership over the text in other media. 2. The reader marks the changes they plan on making and sends them to the author for approval.

As for sex scenes, I brought up the subject for two reasons:

The first is because specifically for me, at least -- and I do wonder if I'm the only feeling this -- reading porn and listening to porn are two entirely different things, and while I am very comfortable with the former, the latter kind of squicks me. Maybe it's the fact that it feels like I'm not alone (there's someone reading porn in my ear); maybe it's the fact that the atmosphere of a written sex scene is very hard to capture in a way that I find hot in audio. The pacing of the scene is crucial, and hard to transfer to audio; a lot of what I find hot in porn is sounds, grunts and moans and gasps and sometimes just uttered syllables, and I usually find them very awkward in podfic.

The second is for similar reasons, but from the readers' POV. I'm sure, though it's not a scientific study, that there are podfic readers who are uncomfortable reading explicit scenes -- either because the scenes are difficult to do right, or because they're afraid of somehow being linked to it one day from their RL identities. And we can say, fine, then those readers should just restrict themselves to non-explicit fic, but: there's a lot of really amazing fic that could still be amazing if it weren't explicit that it would be a shame to pass up on for just that reason, and besides, the podficcing world isn't so big, and it would be a shame for readers, who might be really awesome, not to record certain fics for that reason.

I'm by no means trying to say that podfics should always be censored or anything. But I do think it would be cool to have that kind of adaptation option, if the author permits it and if the reader wants it -- just to have it floating around in the fannish consciousness that it's a possibility, which is why I brought it up in the first place. I remember there used to be fics that offered PG-13 and NC-17 versions of the same story, back in... a long time ago. It's been done before; it's more tricky with podfic, because of the issue of changing the text that someone else has written (or trying to convince the author to dedicate it time and do it themselves for your reading benefit).

Like I said, I'd love for this to just be an option that's out there for people to consider, both authors and readers. I can imagine it going in a couple of different ways:

*The author rewriting an explicit sex scene into something less explicit, maybe rated R or PG-13, for the purpose of podficcing.

*The reader rewriting the scene in the same manner, with the author's permission and approval of the final product before recording it.

*Maybe even recording two versions of the same story with different ratings, although I'm sure readers probably won't bother.

In any case, fics adapted in such a way should have a disclaimer, both on the downloading page and somewhere in the metadata, saying they've been altered from the original into a lower rating.

There are many fics in which sex scenes are essential. And whether they're essential or not, if the author doesn't want the fics changed then they shouldn't be changed. But there are also a lot of long, awesome, shippy fics that don't have to have explicit sex scenes to be awesome, and I'd love to have them more easily available for the (few? many? I have no idea) like me who'd rather read NC-17 scenes in writing than have them narrated in my ear.

And to answer Zvi's last point: as a listener, I would have no problem whatsover getting a story that was changed from the original text as long as it had the author's seal of approval/permission. I wouldn't want the specific changes indicated in neither the metadata nor the reading; I'd want the change acknowledged in the metadata, but anything beyond that I'd prefer to read in a post online at a later time, if at all.

Hey, this is actually meant as a serious suggestion, not snarky! I have changed fic before for my own reading. Typos that annoy me (or the obnoxious cum!), just things that I didn't like. I might do a find and replace when a character's misspelled and it bugs me.

So I wonder whether it might be a way to get YOUR reading experience? I've seriously considered pulling podfics into audacity and just cutting out the music that annoys me. So, maybe you can do that with stories? If it's just a central scene or two...you could find them and just cut them for your own private use???

I could do that, yes, but it would come out choppy; here, I tried to suggest an alternative that would still result in a whole, cohesive story.

As it is, what I currently do is just skip forward when I reach porn scenes in podfics, which I can do in my iPod, and not in the car, and it's, well, an imperfect solution :-) For the sake of others like me and podficcers who might be uncomfortable as well, I thought this option might work.

(Thanks for your suggestion, though :-))

I'm an author who has posted stories with PG and NC17 versions. I see no problems with this at all, provided there was consent between the author and the reader. However, I would be leery of an invisible pressure on the author to agree to edit her story (otherwise no one will record my fic) and of providing two fic options (PG and NC17) and only one podfic (PG). It would not be that hard to record both, actually, as the PG13 generally relies on the tried-and-true 'fade to black' after some kissing/making out *g* and is therefore simply shorter.

It's interesting your reasons for not wanting explicit content. I was thinking more of people who listen to fic in cars or living rooms, with other family members and friends around listening in *g*

Funny, but as much as I lobby for podfic being thought of as its own transformative work (and not just an accessibility thing), etc, I cannot stand the idea of altering the text. I alter it less than theatre actors; I was shocked when I read what jinjurly wrote once about changing all the 'shhh' in fic she records into 'shush', because that's the sort of change I forbid myself as a reader.

It has meant, as a podfic artist, that there are a lot of stories I enjoyed reading which I could not record because there were grammar issues or sentence flow issues that I could simply not record properly as written; either mistakes or not, they were features of the texts that means we did not match, and there was nothing I envision I could do about it. Even now if I was given the liberty to change stuff and edit the text I'm going to record, I think I would feel very freaked out about it (even though for some stories it might be edits I have dreamed of doing for my own reading pleasure - I have only dreamed of it and never changed the story).

So yeah, anyway - the removal of sex scenes feels particularly shocking to me. As much as I understand the idea that no one receives the same work of art the same way, and audience reception is important to respect as are accessibility issues, etc, I also feel there has to be limits to what 'a work' is, you know? If we edit a story to record it without the sex, or with less misogyny, or removing the swear words, for me it's not the same story anymore, it's not the same 'work'.

And works are SO abundant, really, that I tend to feel like if work X has features 1, 2 and 3 that bother you, your role as audience is to pick another work (and/or critique work X on those grounds, whatever; I'm not suggesting people shouldn't interact with works they don't thoroughly enjoy), because there IS another work out there that matches your tastes, surely.

I dunno, I just, whoa. It's really a topic that freaks me out I guess.

Edited (typos) 2010-04-29 17:10 (UTC)

As others have already noted, I just wanted to chime in and say wow - I hadn't considered this possibility and it should definitely be on the table for discussion. Thanks for raising the issue.

As someone who has been podficced and made a couple of unpublished podfics... I'm for adaptation! For fewer conflicts & problems I think it'd be best if the person asked the author for permission first-- authors will feel differently about having their works transformed and their wishes ought to be respected. If they want each word preserved, that's cool.

Myself, I write for an audience that'll be reading through written text. If a podficcer told me that changing some wordings would improve the text in audio format, I'd give them the green light. I'd also be interested to see what deeper changes someone might want to make, in changing rating or shortening a scene etc. I'd want to know why and how, but... I'd like to try to be fairly flexible. Of course I'd refuse certain things-- such as the insertion of racist content-- but if the podficcer suggested changes that improved the fic/podfic, I'd love that! I know my work is flawed and I'd like to see suggestions on how to improve it.

In a way, I think a podfic does change the original story in and of itself. By giving vocal intonation, determining the pace of the reading, and so forth, it's not quite the original version. It's transformative! And since the entire enterprise of fic is transformative, I personally wouldn't want to say "but no the changes stop here." I want other people to be able to take my creations and change it so it's how they see it, much as I took someone else's work and fiddled it to fit my vision. (Which makes me think-- what if instead of releasing a remix fic in written format, it were released as an a podfic?)

Of course, I can see why other people wouldn't want adaptations of their own works and again I think such wishes should be respected. I also wanted to throw out some ideas supporting the notion of adaptation.

From Roga

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